Upgrading the Kernel

First we need to upgrade the kernel to 2.6. The kernel is the core of the Linux OS that everything else depends on and can be likened to the conductor in an orchestra. This wiki page has quite a detailed tutorial in updating the kernel to 2.6 in Xebian (I think it's very well written, but then I would say that because it's written by me!). So have a look through it, as this is what I will be basing the kernel upgrade instructions on.

First we need to get the source code for the kernel. Go to http://www.kernel.org and have a look to see what the latest STABLE version of the source is. Then download it with something like:

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.14.3.tar.bz2
tar xfvj linux-2.6.14.3.tar.bz2
ln -s linux-2.6.14.3 linux

The last line creates a symbolic link - which is like a Windows shortcut - to the directory so that you don't have to type in the full path each time.

Now we need to get the Xbox-Linux patch file that tweaks the source code for the Xbox. Go to the XBOX-Linux Homepage and download the patch that matches the version of the source code you just downloaded. For example:

wget http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xbox-linux/linux-2.6.14-xbox.patch.gz

(Once again, the wget command above is all entered on one line.)

tar xfvz linux-2.6.14-xbox.patch.gz
cp linux-2.6.14-xbox.patch linux/

Using the patch command we can use the information found in the patch file to modify the source code:

cd linux
patch -p1 < linux-2.6.14-xbox.patch

Hopefully this should work without any errors. The Xbox patch creates a config file for us to use, but we need to rename it:

cp kernel.config .config

Now we need to choose the options for parts of the kernel that we would like compiled:

make oldconfig

Tags: How To, NAS, Xbox,

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